Is my power supply dead?

[gordonleslie]

Long time reader first time poster

Just recently build a new gaming rig specs as follows

Antec nine hundred case
Intel core 2 duo E8400
Thermalright ultra 120 heatsink
Scythe S-flex 120mm fan
Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 motherboard
Corsair TX-750W powersupply
Corsair twin 2x4096-8500C5 (2x2G)
HIS radeon HD4870
Creative sound blaster X-FI
Seagate 500G hard drive
LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray reader
Windows vista 64-bit

Had everything up and running fine, installed windows and all the software that i needed. Spent the next few hours updating all the drivers etc. Not a single hitch through the whole process sound worked perfectly. Downloaded fanspeed - cpu at idle was 32C

Now to fire up crysis - game loaded fine, i changed all the settings etc started up a new single player game - i had already seen the opening cinematic so went away to make a hot drink. Come back and my computer is off.

Hit the power button .... nothing. Took the power cord out waiting for a bit, put back in hit start, the LED's come on for mabey 1 sec and all the fans mabey do a 1/4 turn but thats it.

Pretty much rip everything back out but still no joy - best it can do it turn on for max 1 second. (this is barebones pretty much motherboard,cpu and cooler thats it)

Thinking its the powersupply i rig up my old one (antec 550W ) to the barebones just to see what will happen. Rig powered up fine - obviously not booting very far cause its just the motherboard and cpu and cooler.

Any ideas as to what could have happened - there are 2 things im a little iffy on.

Firstly my 4870 has 2 x 6 pin power connectors i had both of these connected hope thats correct.

Secondly my motherboard has a 8 pin ATX 12V connector - i had all 8 pins connected when using my new powersupply - however when i took my old antec powersupply out of my old motherboard i noticed it only had a 4 pin connector. I read up on this a bit more and am still confused however with the 4 pin in is still seemed to power up fine.

Really need some ideas - If my power supply is dead i dont want to buy and instal another one without finding out how my first one died.

Going to return a mower to a mate, when i get back i will try and completly boot my system up (with everything installed) with my old power supply (antec 550W truepower 2.0 should be ok with no load right?). Or i could try and boot my old system up with my new power supply.

Thanks a lot for any help provided

 

[gordonleslie]

Just an update - i am currently typing this from my new machine! using my old antec 550W power supply. This pretty much confirms that the problem is with my corsair 750W supply.

I will try and use my new (suspected dead) supply on my old machine now.

Still have no idea how my power supply died and i am VERY hesitant to load crysis or put any load at all on my antec 550W - am i just being paranoid?.

Any ideas as to how my new supply died? Also if its dead why does it power up for a few seconds?

Thanks

 

[gordonleslie]

nope just tried to power my old rig with my new power supply - fans started up etc for about 1 second and thats it -this motherboard has an LED that indicates if there is power to the motherboard and it is on when this power supply is plugged in - to me this must mean that its not completely dead.

Still need help to prevent another incident like this - im tossing up whether is might have been a dodgy product - i really dont want to try cysis again and lose both supplies!

 

[Zap]

Welcome to the forums, gordonleslie.

I just RMA'd a Corsair 750W for the same problem. Corsair is really good about their warranty, so just contact them and they'll get you an RMA number in short order. I'd just chalk it up to that 1% or so of these things that fail. For you and me with failed units, there's probably 200 others out there with working units. These things happen, so just roll with it. If you build enough systems, you'll see this happen.

Incidentally the Corsair 650W and 550W that I have in other systems are doing fine.

 

[gordonleslie]

Thanks a lot Zap - just one question, do you think my antec truepower 2.0 550W will be enough to run my system under load (not overclocked) the reason i went with 750W is that i was thinking down the track of crossfireing another 4870.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: gordonleslie
do you think my antec truepower 2.0 550W will be enough to run my system under load (not overclocked)

I believe it should be fine until you get your replacement Corsair 750W. Card uses two 6 pin power, right? Not sure I'd keep it like that for the long run though - if it was a True Power Trio then it would be better, but IIRC the TP2 were borderline with the faulty capacitor fiasco that hit so many companies. I'm sure the original TruePower series had those, but not 100% sure the 2.0 version did. Can anyone verify?